About Us > Who We Are

WHO WE ARE

Victor Paul Borg

Victor has been writing and taking pictures about travel for close to twenty years. His writing and photography is published in some of the most prestigious magazines in the world, and he mostly writes about geography and the geography of travel in its widest sense. After living in five countries in three continents, he eventually married and settled in Sichuan, China, a place he feels attached to for its intact nature and culture. He lives with his wife in a city that’s got less than half a million inhabitants, where the number of long-living foreigners can be counted on one hand. He’s been writing and travelling in Asia for 9 year, and passion for nature and culture, and stamina for adventure, shows in his work – he was the first outsider ever to sleep in the caves with the legendary People of the Caves, as they call themselves. Now Victor brings his expertise to Pepper Mountains. He’s the creative force behind the venture, getting involved to share his travel discoveries gleaned from extensive travels in western China. He creates virtually all the tours – and leads some of them (including, of course, the photography and travel writing tours). He also contributes his magazine writings and adventure stories, as well as all photography, to this website.

Chen Yong

Native Sichuanese Chen started his working life as an English teacher, but then snapped up an opportunity to work in Africa. He spent three years working in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia – it was an experience that broadened his mind, and started him on a career that has seen him trot the globe. After Africa, he returned to his home-town in Deyang and embarked on a career that has seen him juggle various jobs: he works as an interpreter, as a promoter and marketer of industrial products internationally, and he dabbles in publishing and advertising as translator-advisor-at-large for private companies and government departments. He continues to hop across the world in his various work roles, and he's also an aficionado of model trains – his collection of model trains has expanded to the point that he constantly bickers that his house is too small (he also has to put up with complaints by his wife that his trains are taking over the house). Chen is also a voracious reader, and in his city he’s distinguished himself among the academic and social elite. Now he brings all these skills to Pepper Mountains, where he performs various jobs; and soon he will develop his own repertoire of cultural tours.

Han Yu Dong

Another native Sichuanese who grew up in a peasants’ family in the mountains – she often recounts stories of being engrossed by snakes coiled under her bed when she was a toddler, and of cycling 20km back and forth to go to school – Xiao Yu has come a long way. She went to work in Macao and other cities in Gaungdong, saved money, bought an apartment in the second wealthiest city in Sichuan, and moved her parents to the city. She eventually developed middle-class sensibilities, became an artist, and embarked on various travels throughout China and parts of south and east Asia. Now she joins Pepper Mountains as administrator and co-ordinator.

Jinghu Overseas International Travel Service

Within China, we work as part of Jinghu Overseas International Travel Service (JOINTS), a company registered in Deyang, Sichuan. JOINTS is a large company that has been running tours – and other tourism-related businesses – for 15 years, and this gives us operational strength in terms of solid logistics infrastructure (including a fleet of vehicles), business connections, respectability, clout, and so on. This enables us to run tours with efficiency, care, and responsibility. JOINTS is thrilled to develop a new form of meaningful tourism as a new branch in their business, and run Pepper Mountains tours differently from its other standard tours – running to a different beat, using a network of new partners and tour leaders, following itineraries that are new and original, and dishing a service that is more personalised and flexible – all in keeping with the ideas espoused in this website.